


Stop All the Clocks

by caringis_notanadvantage



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, M/M, Post Reichenbach, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:45:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caringis_notanadvantage/pseuds/caringis_notanadvantage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone would protect me. It was all I had left.</p><p>“No. Friends protect people.”</p><p>Evidently they did not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop All the Clocks

 

 

Sherlock Holmes had finally returned home to London. But the London that met him was not the same. Things had changed in the three years he had been out trying to make the world safe for John Watson.

 

Yes

 

Sherlock Holmes was not receiving the welcome he had hoped for.

 

* * *

Anger.

 

Shock.

 

Despair.

 

The feelings hit me with the rhythm of my heartbeat.  Beat. Anger. Beat. Shock. Beat. Despair. My lungs collapsed in on themselves and my vision blackened.

 

No. No. No.  

 

Turn it off.

 

Turn it off.

 

That’s better.

 

Not all the distractions. I need to be able to think.

 

John needs to know.

 

You have to tell him.

 

You owe him this.

 

“I…” That woman just lost her husband. See the state of her hair and her dress. And the flowers. Roses. Why choose roses if he had been death for long. Two weeks, probably less. She’s happy about it, but she doesn’t want the world to know. Abuse, probably sexual. This is clear from he-

 

Stop.

 

The deductions can wait.

 

Tell him.

 

“I went to Moscow. Right away. A man called Johnson, a footman, was stationed there. He was low level. To easy to set out of the game. All it took was one bullet. This went on for a month. Moscow was done in a week, after that it was Warsaw and then Berlin. “ No feelings. Cold hard facts.

 

Good.

 

“After all the low levels were out. I moved on to the higher ups. They, unfortunately, proved to be quite the challenge”

 

Don’t tell him about the injuries. No need to tell about the shoulder. Or the leg. Or the scar on your stomach.

 

They have all healed. They are not important.

 

Well the leg was not really-

 

Not important

 

On with the story.

 

“They were good. Rumours were spreading. Soon every member of Moriarty’s web knew that someone were after them. Of course they didn’t know that it was I. how could it be me? I had died over a year ago back in London.” The snort that escaped my lips was exasperated. 

 

Oh they were too easy to trick.

 

“ Oh John. They saw, but they did not observe. The human race is so vacant sometimes. Moriarty would have seen through my disguises in less than a minute. It seemed that tricking them about my identity would be an easy feat. But to eradicate them all? No, that was not easy.”

 

The sword fight in Cairo. Stitches on my stomach.

 

The fistfight in Sydney that ended in me having a dislocated shoulder and him being dead.

 

The Sniper, who shot me in my thigh, in Paris. He was found dead the next morning.

 

Some things are better left unsaid.

 

“It took me one year and four months. After that I was only missing one person.  Colonel Sebastian Moran. He was evading me. He was a ghost. Every place I went, he has just left. Every lead left me with a dead end. For six months I was on a while goose chase. Until..”

 

Until Dublin.

 

Until the confrontation.

 

The results?

 

A dead man and a bullet in my leg.

 

“Until he found me. Which was his mistake. I shall not bore you with the details, but in the end I came out of it alive and he didn’t. And well. Then it was time for me to return.”

 

Return to the living

 

Return to Baker Street.

 

Return to John.

 

“Except while I has been out trying to make London safe again, you had gone and done something stupid, John.”

 

So stupid.

 

So incredibly stupid.

 

“My plan had flaws. I had not taken your feelings into account. And because of my mistake, we are now here, John.”

 

The leaves rustled in the wind, breaking the silence that had surrounded me ever since I set foot in the cemetery.

 

A gravestone.

 

That was all that was left.

 

Polished grey granite with unassuming letters.

 

But the order the letter were arranged in was not unassuming.

 

No.

 

In fact, it was the worst order of letter, I had ever seen.

 

_John Hamish Watson_

_12 th January 1971 – 24th of June 2014_

 

Two months ago.

 

Two months ago John had given up.

 

Two months ago I was in Thailand hiding in the gutters, looking for clues as to were Moran was.

 

Two months ago John put a gun to his head.

 

“I was too late and now you’re gone. And I… “  The crack of my voice made me stop.

 

No tears.

 

No.

 

I turned my coat collar up.

 

_“Can we please not do this this time?”_

_“Do what?”_

_“You being all mysterious with your - cheekbones. And turning your coat collar up so you look cool”_

 

Delete.

 

“When I died you stood at my grave and begged me not to be dead. And I wish that I could do the same, John. I wish. But you are dead. No magic tricks.”

 

_“It’s just a magic trick”_

 

Delete.

 

“I don’t have any friends. I only _had_ one”

 

And that’s over now.  Never again.

 

My breath hitched. It seemed as if my body was betraying me.

 

“Sentiment”

 

I scoffed. 

 

_“Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side.”_

 

All this sentiment was useless.  It all needed to be removed.

 

Alone would protect me. It was all I had.

 

_“No. Friends protect people.”_

Evidently they did not.

 

Delete.

  

I gave the stone one last look.

 

“Goodbye, John.”

 

Delete

 

Mycroft had a car waiting for me. It would drive me back to London, back to work, back to an empty 221b Baker Street.

 

I turned away from the grave.

 

Never to return.

 

* * *

As Sherlock Holmes limped away from the cemetery with dried and unnoticed tears marring his face one thing became clear.

 

The Sherlock Holmes that John Watson had helped create was gone.

 

The heart that many claimed not to exist was gone. Six feet under together with only man, who had ever had the courage to scratch the surface of the enigma.

 

Six years later Sherlock Holmes would lie in his bed in 221b, with a syringe in his arm. A syringe that did not contain his usual 7 percent solution.

 

Oh no, no.

 

Sherlock Holmes took an overdose.

 

And the last word to ever leave his lips was;

 

“John.”

 

For he was indeed lost without his blogger. 

**Author's Note:**

> A friend gave me a prompt that I could not let go. So here you have it. A different take of the post Reichenbach reunion. I hope I gave it justice.
> 
> The title was taken from the Poem "Stop All the Clocks, Cut of the Telephone" by W. H. Auden. I felt that it represented Sherlock and John's relationship pretty accurately. 
> 
> Feedback is always welcome.


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